Flying To Hajj by Al Jazeera Digital

Visualising how two million people reach Mecca for the annual pilgrimage.

The annual hajj is one of the largest international annual pilgrimages. The 5-day event brings together Muslims from all over the world. To get an idea of how many aeroplanes are needed to transport so many people, we set about tracking over 10 million individual GPS co-ordinates from all inbound flights to Jeddah and Medina over the Hajj period. The result is a fascinating interactive data visualization of 16,888 flights.